BLACK HISTORY: BIOGRAPHIES

Rosa Parks
(1913 - 2005)

CBN.com  According to the old saying, "some people are born to greatness,
and some have greatness thrust upon them." Greatness was
certainly thrust upon Rosa Parks, but the modest former seamstress
has found herself equal to the challenge. Known today as "the
mother of the Civil Rights Movement," Parks almost single-handedly
set in motion a veritable revolution in the southern United States,
a revolution that would eventually secure equal treatment under
the law for all black Americans. "For those who lived through
the unsettling 1950s and 1960s and joined the civil rights struggle,
the soft-spoken Rosa Parks was more, much more than the woman
who refused to give up her bus seat to a White man in Montgomery,
Alabama," wrote Richette L. Haywood in Jet. "[Hers]
was an act that forever changed White America's view of Black
people, and forever changed America itself."

From a modern perspective, Parks's actions on December 1, 1955
hardly seem extraordinary: tired after a long day's work, she
refused to move from her seat in order to accommodate a white
passenger on a city bus in Montgomery. At the time, however, her
defiant gesture actually broke a law, one of many bits of Jim
Crow legislation that assured second-class citizenship for blacks.
Overnight Rosa Parks became a symbol for hundreds of thousands
of frustrated black Americans who suffered outrageous indignities
in a racist society. As Lerone Bennett, Jr. wrote in Ebony, Parks
was consumed not by the prospect of making history, but rather
"by the tedium of survival in the Jim Crow South." The
tedium had become unbearable, and Rosa Parks acted to change it.
Then, she was an outlaw. Today she is a hero.

Grew Up Amid Racism

Parks was born Rosa McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama. When
she was still a young child her parents separated, and she moved
with her mother to Montgomery. There she grew up in an extended
family that included her maternal grandparents and her younger
brother, Sylvester. Montgomery, Alabama, was hardly a hospitable
city for blacks in the 1920s and 1930s. As she grew up, Rosa was
shunted into second-rate all-black schools, such as the Montgomery
Industrial School for Girls, and she faced daily rounds of laws
governing her behavior in public places. Ms. magazine contributor
Eloise Greenfield noted that Rosa always detested having to drink
from special water fountains and having to forgo lunch at the
whites-only restaurants downtown. Still, wrote Greenfield, "with
her mother's help, Rosa was able to grow up proud of herself and
other black people, even while living with these rules.... People
should be judged by the respect they have for themselves and others,
Mrs. McCauley said. Rosa grew up believing this."

At twenty Rosa married a barber named Raymond Parks. The couple
both held jobs and enjoyed a modest degree of prosperity. In her
spare time, Mrs. Parks became active in the NAACP and the Montgomery
Voters League, a group that helped blacks to pass a special test
so they could register to vote. By the time she reached mid-life,
Rosa Parks was no stranger to white intimidation. Like many other
Southern blacks, she often boycotted the public facilities marked
"Colored," walking up stairs rather than taking elevators,
for instance. She had a special distaste for the city's public
transportation, as did many of her fellow black citizens.

The Jim Crow rules for the public bus system in Montgomery almost
defy belief today. Black customers had to enter the bus at the
front door, pay the fare, exit the front door and climb aboard
again at the rear door. Even though the majority of bus passengers
were black, the front four rows of seats were always reserved
for white customers. Bennett wrote: "It was a common sight
in those days to see Black men and women standing in silence and
silent fury over the four empty seats reserved for whites."
Behind these seats was a middle section that blacks could use
only if there was no white demand. However, if so much as one
white customer needed a seat in this "no- man's land,"
all the blacks in that section had to move. Bennett concluded:
"This was, as you can see, pure madness, and it caused no
end of trouble and hard feeling." In fact, Parks herself
was once thrown off a bus for refusing to endure the charade of
entry by the back door. In the year preceding Parks's fateful
ride, three other black women had been arrested for refusing to
give their seats to white men. Still the system was firmly entrenched,
and Parks would often walk to her home to spare herself the humiliation
of the bus.

Refused to Give Up Seat on Bus

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks had a particularly tiring day.
She was employed as a seamstress at the Montgomery Fair department
store, and she had spent the day pressing numerous pairs of pants.
She has since admitted that her back and shoulders ached terribly
that day—she was forty-two at the time—and she deliberately
let one full bus pass in order to find a seat on the next one.
The seat she eventually found was in the middle section of the
bus, because the back was filled. A few stops further down the
line, a white man got on and demanded a seat. The driver ordered
Parks and three other black customers to move. The other riders
did as they were told, but Parks quietly refused to give up her
place. The driver threatened to call the police. Parks said: "Go
ahead and call them."

Bennett wrote: "There then occurred one of those little
vignettes that could have changed the course of history. The [police]
officers asked the driver if he wanted to swear out a warrant
or if he wanted them to let Rosa Parks go with a warning. The
driver said he wanted to swear out a warrant, and this decision
and the convergence of a number of historical forces sealed the
death warrant of the Jim Crow South."

Parks was driven to the police station, booked, fingerprinted,
and jailed. She was also photographed as she was being fingerprinted,
a snapshot that has since found its way into history textbooks.
Parks was granted one telephone call, and she used it to contact
E. D. Nixon, a prominent member of Montgomery's NAACP chapter.
Nixon was properly outraged, but he also sensed that in Parks
his community might have the perfect individual to serve as a
symbol of Southern injustice. Nixon called a liberal white lawyer,
Clifford Durr, who agreed to represent Parks. After consulting
with the attorney, her husband, and her mother, Rosa Parks agreed
to undertake a court challenge of the segregationist law that
had led to her arrest.

Inspired Bus Boycott

Word of Parks's arrest spread quickly through Montgomery's black
community, and several influential black leaders decided the time
was ripe to try a boycott of the public transportation system.
One of these leaders, the reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., used
the mimeograph machine at his Baptist church to make 7,000 copies
of a leaflet advertising the boycott. The message of the leaflet
was plain: "Don't ride the bus to work, to town, to school,
or any place Monday, December 5.... If you work, take a cab, or
share a ride, or walk."

The black boycott of Montgomery's city buses was almost universal
on December 5, 1955. A meeting on the subject that evening drew
an overflow crowd numbering in the thousands, and a decision was
made to continue the boycott indefinitely. On Tuesday, December
6th, Parks was found guilty of failure to comply with a city ordinance
and fined $14. She and her attorney appealed the ruling while
the boycott wore on. Ebony correspondent Roxanne Brown wrote:
"For 381 days, Blacks car-pooled and walked to work and church.
Their unified effort not only helped put an end to Jim Crow sectioning
on the buses, it was also financially devastating for the bus
company. It was this monumental event—watched by the world—that
triggered the modern-day Black Freedom Movement and made a living
legend of Mrs. Parks."

It is not necessarily easy to be a living legend, however. Parks
and her family received numerous threats and almost constant telephone
harassment. The strain actually caused Raymond Parks to suffer
a nervous breakdown. In 1957 Rosa and Raymond Parks (and Rosa's
mother) moved north to Detroit, Michigan. If Rosa Parks was safer
in Detroit, she was never quite allowed to recede into anonymity.
As the years passed she was sought out repeatedly as a dignified
spokesperson for the civil rights movement.

A number of universities have awarded her honorary degrees, and
she earned a prestigious job on the staff of Detroit congressman
John Conyers. In 1988 Roxanne Brown noted: "Thirty-two years
after she attracted international attention for sparking the Montgomery
Bus Boycott, Mrs. Parks's ardent devotion to human rights still
burns brightly, like a well-tended torch that ignites her spirit
and calls her to service whenever she is needed."

Founded Institute in Detroit

Age has not robbed Rosa Parks of her beauty and grace, nor has
it restricted her travels and activities. She still makes some
twenty-five to thirty personal appearances per year and is a vocal
opponent of apartheid in South Africa. Her crowning achievement,
however, is the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development,
which she founded in Detroit. The institute offers career training
for 12- to 18-year-olds with special attention to education and
motivation. "Too many young people are not staying in school
and taking advantage of the opportunities they have," Parks
told Ebony. "They're not motivated to learn what is necessary
to get the good positions, the good jobs, to go into business
for themselves."

In February of 1990 Parks received yet another round of adulation
as she was honored at Washington's Kennedy Center on her seventy-seventh
birthday. Tribute chairperson C. Delores Tucker praised Parks
for her "beautiful qualities" of "dignity and indomitable
faith that with God nothing can stop us." In typical fashion,
Parks received the tribute with all due modesty—to this
day she takes little credit for her role in the history of the
civil rights movement. Asked to reveal the secret of her positive
attitude, she told Ebony: "I find that if I'm thinking too
much of my own problems, and the fact that at times things are
not just like I want them to be, I don't make any progress at
all. But if I look around and see what I can do, and go on with
that, then I move on."

The woman known as the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement"
has continued to inspire well into her eighties. Rosa Parks remains
committed to her Detroit-based foundation, The Rosa and Raymond
Parks Institute for Self-Development and has overseen programs
such as "Pathways to Freedom," which encourages young
people to learn about their heritage and reach their potential.
In 1998 she spent five days in Nova Scotia in support of the program.

Meanwhile, awards in her honor have continued to roll in. She
received the prestigious Medal of Freedom award from President
Bill Clinton in 1996. Jet quoted the president at the awards ceremony:
"When she sat down on the bus, she stood up for the American
ideals of equality and justice and demanded that the rest of us
do the same." In 1998 Parks received the first International
Freedom Conductor Award given by the National Underground Railroad
Freedom Center. A year later she was awarded the Detroit-Windsor
International Freedom Festival Freedom Award for her contribution
to the cause of freedom and peace. During the dedication Detroit
Mayor Dennis Archer was quoted by PR Newswire as saying, "Her
dignity and grace has inspired generations of freedom fighters
and defenders of human rights."

Awarded Congressional Medal of Honor

In July of 1999 the U.S. Congress awarded Parks the Congressional
Gold Medal of Honor, the nation's highest civilian award. In accepting
the award at a ceremony in the nation's capital presided over
by President Bill Clinton, Parks said, as quoted Jet, "This
medal is encouragement for all of us to continue until all people
have equal rights." The first recipients of this award was
George Washington. Other recipients include Mother Theresa and
Nelson Mandela. The following September Parks was inducted in
to the Alabama Academy of Honor, an organization that recognizes
Alabama citizens for their contribution to the state. Later that
same year she was awarded the first Governor's Medal of Honor
for Extraordinary Courage from Alabama Governor Donald Seigelman.

In December of 2000 Troy State University in Montgomery, Alabama
dedicated a library and museum in Parks's name. Despite frail
health she was able to attend the ceremony thanks to a prominent
African-American attorney who flew her there on his private jet.
The museum features a replica of the bus she was sitting on that
fateful day in December 1955 and recounts the conversation between
Parks and the bus driver who demanded she give up her seat. Meanwhile,
the actual bus where it all took place was bought by Dearborn,
Michigan's Henry Ford Museum for $492,000 in 2001. Upon the museum's
acquisition of the bus, Parks attended a private viewing where
the museum pledged to restore the bus to its 1955 appearance.

In April of 2001 the Rosa Parks Initiative was kicked off in
Detroit. Sponsored by a non-profit organization, the initiative
hopes to build an $8 million monument complete with one million
roses and an interactive history of the Civil Rights movement
in that city's Belle Isle park. In January of 2002 Rosa Park's
former Alabama home was placed on the National Register of Historic
Places.

The message of Parks's life also continues to be told through
books and film. In 1993 she published a children's book entitled
Rosa Parks: My Story. It is a chronology of her life leading up
to the monumental day in 1955 when she refused to give up her
seat on a bus to a white passenger. The book is a historical reminder
to children that the freedoms they enjoy today were hard won.
She wrote in the book, "People always say that I didn't give
up my seat because I was tired but that wasn't true I was not
tired physically I was not old. I was 42. No, the only tired I
was, was tired of giving in." Four years later, she and author
Jim Haskins, reissued the book for a younger audience. Full of
colorful illustrations and age-appropriate definitions of concepts
such as segregation and racism, the newly titled book, I Am Rosa
Parks, allows children as young as four to grasp the importance
of the Civil Rights Movement.

Story Made Into TV Movie

In 2002 CBS released the television movie The Rosa Parks Story
starring Angela Bassett in the title role. The film recounted
her early life, the incident on the Montgomery bus in 1955, and
her role in the Civil Rights movement, as well as her relationship
with her husband Raymond Parks. "I chuckled many times about
the courtship scene," Parks told Jet. Filmed in Alabama,
it was the first film about her life made with her participation.

Not all of Parks's recent experiences have been honorary. In
September of 1994 a 28 year-old man broke into Parks's Detroit
home and robbed and beat her. He was caught the next day. With
characteristic grace, Parks was quoted in Jet as saying of the
attack, "I regret very much that some of our people are in
such a mental state that they would hurt and rob an older person."
A few years later Parks found her name being used for a song title
on the rap group OutKast's third album. She had not given her
consent and in April of 1999 filed a lawsuit requesting her name
removed from all OutKast products and asking for $25,000. In an
ironic twist, the group hired the attorney for Martin Luther King
Jr.'s estate to defend them. In a decision that raised both public
and press outrage, the judge ruled against Parks, stating that
OutKast's use of her name was protected under the First Amendment.
However, in another case involving the misuse of her name, Parks
was the victor. In 2000 she discovered that a third party had
registered the internet domain name www.rosaparks.com and was
offering it for sale. According to her attorney, quoted in PR
Newswire, "We sent a cease and desist letter to the
registered owner of the Web site and demanded the transfer of
ownership to Mrs. Parks. The transfer is now being made."

In 2002, nearly half a century after making a decision to continue
sitting on a segregated Montgomery, Alabama bus, Parks is a living
legend. Though she was oft-quoted as saying that she didn't set
out that day in December 1955 to make history, she did. And in
doing so, she also changed it. Her legacy is felt every day by
Americans of all backgrounds, races, and creeds.

December 8, 2003: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled
that Parks could proceed with her suit against hip-hop duo Outkast,
who used her name without permission on a 1998 track. Originally
filed in 1999, the suit had been dismissed by a federal judge
who cited free speech and ruled in favor of Outkast. An appeals
court reinstated part of her lawsuit, requiring an artistic reason
to justify calling the song "Rosa Parks." Source: Entertainment
Weekly, December 19, 2003, p. 24.